The box looks a bit empty at the moment. I may put more in it later. It may not be finished after all. :o (sigh)
[EDIT]This is the latest render. I decided to put it in the first post, so you can see what the ‘finished’ project looks like without scrolling down to the end of the thread. The original is the attachment below, so the comments in the following posts apply to that image (and the ones that follow), and not to the image shown above.
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The wood texture and decal on the lid is great. The inside of the box however appears brighter than the outside even in the shadows? Overall though it’s a nice composition.
I am so glad you liked the decal. The company does not appear to have a web presence (or they’ve changed their logo since I bought the box), so I had to draw the decal in Inkscape. I’ll see what I can do about the lighter wood inside the box.
if you check the shadows in the interior of the box you’ll notice they have different intensity (side wall and top wall) which looks odd. The problem as I see it, is that your fill light is too bright in one direction. You should either add a second fill (not too strong) to light the darker shadow, or reduce the side fill light. This will also add some contrast to the interior which looks flat. The objects inside are barely distinguishable because of this lack of contrast.
Another thing you could do is add some beveling to the box since you cannot tell right now the curved ellaborated shape of it.
blenditall, malefico, thanks for the suggestions. I’ve put in buffered shadows on the key light, eliminated one of the fill lights and adjusted the others. I tried it with and without AO, but I couldn’t see a bit of difference in the two renders, so I’m posting the one without AO. The top edges on the box carcase are supposed to be sharp, so the box shuts tightly. I went to a lot of trouble to get them to look the way they do.
CD, I generally wait for improvements to be incorporated into a Blender Foundation Release, so, no, I haven’t tried the Broken build. If you can describe how it would look more realistic, I’ll see what I can do with the regularly available lighting.
[blenditall, 2000+ posts: go figure. I think it’s a combination of perfectionism, way too much to learn about Blender, and lack of a round tuit. I almost posted the Swiss Mountain Dog, but talking to a veterinarian friend discovered I put the dew claws on the wrong side of the paws, so he’s currently languishing in WIP until I get a round tuit. ]
Hey Orinoco, I see the shadows are OK now. I took the liberty of playing a little bit with your image as to better explain what I meant with bevelling and contrast.
All edges in 3D are perfect. That’s bad because in real life everything has a thickness. When you use perfectly sharp edges, you lose realism and definition of shapes and volumes. Bevels react to light adding definite contour to solid bodies. For instance I couldn’t tell what part was side or top of the box in the lower part of the image. I added very simplistic bevelling and some contrast, and now it’s crystal clear the shape of the box. Bevels don’t need to be big, just a tiny amount of it is enough. If you are using subsurf, often adding a couple of loops very close to the edge already is enough to create the effect.:yes:
I had also problems to tell the shape and volumes of the objects inside the box. This objects are supposed to be important for you to show, so I highlighted some parts of them and darken some other in order to add definition and clarity to the volumes.
What do you think ? Sorry for butchering you image I hope you don’t mind, I just tried to make myself clear
malefico, I don’t mind a bit. That’s how I learn, taking advice from someone who’s “been there, done that.” I can see a big improvement from the first render to the third one (and I thought the first one was finished). I’ll give it a shot when I get home. I do have subsurf on (practically everything I do has subsurf on) which gives me nice rounded corners on the outside of the box. I think I can get some highlights at those spots you pointed out without too much trouble.
On the other hand, I think it will take a bit of experimenting to get more contrast on the pipe inside the box without messing up the shadows. Any suggestions?
Orinoco: I’d try using extra lights working on the pipe ONLY, you can use layers for that (the Layer button in lamps settings) or if you feel comfortable with it, the node compositor and render layers, which would be you better control on the different parts of the image. Use Hemi lights as backlights and you can use a wide spot on top of everything for soft shadows (high Bi, soft values). Keep it up !
About the wood I have the impression you could add more bumpness to it (remember that’s only visible with specular lights), other than that, the wood looks nice as it is.
I’ve got some beveling on the edges, more light on the pipe, and changed the tint of the key light to bluish, to balance the brown fill lights. I’m not sure whether it works or not. I put some bump onto the teak material in the box, using a cheat that I think worked out well: the bump map is the same as the color map, but the Map Input sizes x,y,z are increased to 3.
Nodes and layers are something I’ve not taken a look at yet. They’re on my things-to-do-list.
I would say that the first things that could do with improving are the blurry textures, especially under the box. In this sort of scene i would make use of somekind of AO, i see you chose not to uyse any, but the lighting seem quite nice as it is.
Assuming whatever is in the box has a glass ball i would recommend making the box receive transparent shadows, aswell as on the glass itsself, at this point i would try to fake some caustics, or use real caustics but i am unsure whether thats what you want.
I’ve gone back to the original key light, I wasn’t sure about the tint either.
The thing in the box is a boatswains pipe: a hollow silver ball with a hole in it, soldered to a silver tube, with a flat silver plate soldered to both of them to reinforce the joint and provide a place to attach a chain. Blow in the tube and you get a high pitched whistle, which can be modified by how you hold the pipe and how hard you blow into the tube. They’ve probably been in use to signal ship’s deck crews ever since ships were large enough to have deck crews.
I tried AO, but couldn’t see any difference in renders with and without, except the AO renders took a lot longer. I’ve used AO on other things, but in this case, if there was an effect, it was so subtle as to be not worth it.
The blurry texture under the box is meant to focus attention away from the table and to the box itself. Is it working? Or is the blurry texture a distraction?
That’s a big improvement from the first render. Its good to se so much good and helpful advice being put to use.
I agree with Animal about the blurry textures. Also if you look at the size difference between the wood’s growth rings on the box and the growth rings on the table, their is too much difference. It might help if you scale the texture on the table a little?
Turned down the bias on the key light, got rid of the annoying light leaks at the corners. The light leaks were really obvious by the ring, it looked like it was floating. Now the shadows have it tied down. Same thing with the chain. Turned on AO for this render. It didn’t act as I expected, which was to put soft shadows in the corners. Instead, I got a general darkening all round. Looks better compared to the last render, which now seems to have a light haze on it.
Just wondering…
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